In Chanteuse de café-concert, Degas depicts the celebrated performer Emilie Bécat at the Café des Ambassadeurs in Paris. Degas produced numerous works taking the outdoor cafés and concert halls of Paris as his subject matter. Most of the performers depicted remain anonymous, except for Mademoiselle Bécat. Born in Marseilles, Bécat made her debut at the Café des Ambassadeurs in 1875 and experienced her greatest fame between 1875 and 1885. Executed during this period, the present work portrays the performer at the height of her Parisian success.

Bécat was renowned for her wildly gestural performances. Well loved by the crowds, Bécat was the perfect subject for an artist looking to imbue his works with vivacity and expression. Rendered in rich pastels against a monochrome backdrop, and taking a closely cropped view of the subject, with the present work Degas presents us with a close up view of the performer. Other compositions of the Café des Ambassadeurs present a bird’s eye view of the stage from the more expensive, upper-class balconies, however this work places the viewer on the same level as the action. In doing so, Degas enhances the intimacy of the scene and offers a psychological portrait of his subject. White heightening illuminates the singer’s face, creating the impression of stage spotlights and drawing attention to the delicate rendering of her features. Degas presents Bécat in what appears to be a touching moment of respite. As with Degas’s images of ballerinas, caught in moments immediately preceding or following a performance, here too Degas seeks to portray his subject as the mask of performance slips to reveal the individual beneath. This voyeuristic portrayal exposes the physical and psychological toll the performing life takes upon an individual. The result, as evident in the present picture, is a lively and sensitive portrait of an artist at work.

Degas frequently used his lithographs and monotypes as a base for fully worked pastels, as in the case of the present work. By applying pastel to a monotype base, Degas achieves a remarkable chromatic intensity. The heightened interplay of light more strongly imparts upon the viewer the impression of being within the Café des Ambassadeurs, and the masterful layering of mediums increases the illusion of pictorial depth. According to Degas scholar Eugenia Parry Janis, Degas created the monotype by applying ink to the plate with a brush making for a very painterly finish. The application of pastel to this expressive monotype base is indicative of the artist’s interest in experimenting with varying mediums to create unique compositional results. Bécat appears in numerous monotypes and lithographs reworked with pastel, many of which are in distinguished public and private collects ions.

Chanteuse de café-concert has been widely exhibited across America and has distinguished American provenance having once belonged to the collects or Robert Kelso Cassatt, the beloved nephew of the painter Mary Cassatt who was herself a close friend and advocate of Degas’s. Mary Cassatt painted Robert Kelso Cassat numerous t.mes s when he was a child and she acted as an advisor to her brother, Robert’s father Alexander, a wealthy industrialist who amassed an important collects ion of Impressionist and Modern art with Mary’s help. After passing through the hands of famed dealers M. Knoedler and Justin Thannhauser, Chanteuse de café-concert entered the collects ion of the eminent American collects or and philanthropist Arthur Sachs, in whose family collects ion it remained for over sixty years until it was purchased from the estate of Arthur’s daughter by the present owner.